Evaluation of Electromagnetic Fields in a Hospital for Safe Use of Electronic Medical Equipment

Abstract

Establishment of electromagnetic compatibility is important in use of electronic medical equipment in hospitals. To evaluate the electromagnetic environment, the electric field intensity induced by electromagnetic radiation in broadcasting spectra coming from outside the hospital was measured in a new hospital building before any patients visited the hospital and 6 months after the opening of the hospital. Various incoming radio waves were detected on the upper floors, with no significant difference in measured levels before and after opening of the hospital. There were no cellphone terminal signals before the hospital opened, but these signals were strongly detected at 6 months thereafter. Cellphone base stations signals were strongly detected on the upper floors, but there were no signals at most locations in the basement and in the center of the building on the lower floors. A maximum electrical intensity of 0.28 V/m from cellphone base stations (2.1 GHz) was detected at the south end of the 2nd floor before the hospital opened. This value is lower than the EMC marginal value for general electronic medical equipment specified in IEC 60601-1-2 (3 V/m). Therefore, electromagnetic interference with electronic medical equipment is unlikely in this situation. However, cellphone terminal signals were frequently detected in non-base station signal areas. This is a concern, and understanding signal strength from cellphone base stations at a hospital is important for promotion of greater safety.

Broad-Band Noise Reduction using Least Mean Square (LMS)-Adaptive Line Enhancer (ALE) on Doppler Blood Flow Sound Signal

“…These biomedical signals are very weak and often buried by background noise or combined with either periodic or non-periodic signals (Jiao, et al, 2012). In healthcare settings, noise possibly caused by electromagnetic interference (EMI) between medical equipment and radio waves emission from mobile phones, wireless local area networks (WLANs), radio station transmitters, or even other medical devices (Ishida, et al, 2016). Medical equipments that are used for measuring or detecting body parameters are more susceptible to interference because they can measure very low -level signal and have probing wires act as antenna.…”

Electromagnetic Cavity Resonance Equalization With Bandpass Negative Group Delay

“…HE performances of modern electronic and communication devices suffer from unintentional radiated electromagnetic interreferences (EMIs) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. The interference issues were found at different scale of electronic systems.…”

“…For example, the wireless system quality of services is frequently victim of propagation channel multipaths [1], cyclic delay [2] and group delay (GD) mitigation [3]. The EMI effects were emphasized in different systems as medical equipment's [4][5][6].…”

Visible light communication-based positioning for indoor environments using supervised learning

“…Last but not least, the same infrastructure that is deployed for illumination and communication can be also used for Visible Light-based Positioning (VLP). We also note that this technology can be utilized in environments such as hospitals, where the use of RF is banned because it may create Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) problems [6].…”